Saturday, February 11, 2006

Lessons Learnt

Well, I was challenged this week at work- I don't have enough students failing, I was told- now what this means, more or less, is that my course is not challenging enough.
I would be resentful of this but nowadays, I don't care so I am going to make the course more challenging. I think what I will do with 2nd year Honours is Conversations in French is some text analysis. We will try to write about poems and stories and talk about symbolism and such. If they want challenging, by gum, I'll give it to 'em.

Also I learnt that the lesson I am supposed to learn from Cathy is that to Be prosperous, we have to Behave in a prosperous Manner.
Cathy, as you know, is the most claw-your-way-to-the-top person I know, she makes the most money with the least to start with- and I think it is because she Behaves in a Prosperous manner. She likes to spend lotsa $ on the things she likes, like fancy dinners. (we went to Two Urban Licks for her birthday dinner. It was Very Atmospheric, which is something I'm going to have to pay more attention to in the future. ) and she behaves in a fairly flashy way, with a clean fancy car and Neiman-Marcus makeup and that sort of thing. I'm going to have to try to put the vibe out that I have $ instead of going on about how poor we are. Ma also agrees with this, and Trey also agrees with this, so they must be right.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Did you wake up one day and just DECIDE to be Trifling?

We had some degree of festivity for the Super Bowl; Let it be said that I did not watch the match at all, already knowing who was going to win; plus, "Spirited Away" was on and Alejandro was watching it, and Sandy was having four kinds of fit.

I get to be, if you can believe this, the Official Peacemaker; I get to be the go-to guy when some chick is spazzing out. I don't know how I acquired this particular power, but it must have something to do with the fact that I will shut up and listen. I dunno. Whenever Naomi is spazzing out, Freddy always tries to get me to calm her down.

To get back to the original story- Saniel decided to have a Super Bowl Party, or rather, I have the feeling that Daniel, with Sandy's grudging acceptance, decided to have a Super
Bowl Party. Daniel decided, for reasons alluded to above, to limit the number of attendees. So I went- Trey went- Alejandro was there- Freomi and Jason went- and then Frank comes, and Julity come, and Julio's girlfriend Iris comes, and then Frank brings some long-lost brother in law whom I try to talk into buying the Catera/Omega.

For some reason, Xtina gets somehow involved. Xtina is Alejandro's Female Elternteil- I can't really bring myself to say "mother" in this context- She calls Freddy on Sandy's phone, because Freddy either isn't answering his phone or it isn't working. Typical, and that's what Sandy means by Trifling. They are just all wrapped up in Trifling things instead of paying attention to the things that really matter. Xtina tells Freddy (Ed couldn't follow this story, or wasn't interested, so see what you get out of it) that Saniel "have a porn magazine in their bathroom and she doesn't want Alejandro to be exposed to it" Keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen and everybody else, that if Alejandro were photographic film- she's exposed him to a surfeit of things that Eckerd would refuse to develop. Freddy, instead of trusting his nonexistent better instincts, investigates, which causes Sandy to throw four kinds of fit and go off on both of them- because anyone with any sense at all (not Freddy) would realise Saniel no more have porn in their bathroom than they have the Loch Ness Monster.

I take Sandy for a ride in the car, and we talk, and she calms down enough to return. She does not immediately take a shower as she said she was going to do; instead, she goes off on Naomi, with the line, "Did you just wake up one day and Decide to be Trifling?" Because, Sandy said, Naomi has a good education and a good family so there is no excuse for this. Even Trey complains that they are silly- they are very silly. They have a tendency to throw really terrible parties, such as their 4th of July party last year at which Willavette, who went to the Cordon Bleu school for a year and a half to be a chef, cooked TURKEY DOGS. I do NOT eat Turkey dogs, so I had to buy my own food, and my own drinks. Sometimes they lure people all the way to Snellville- this happened last week- in the promise of an Event and then the event never comes off, such as some party we had promised to go to for some girls housewarming. This was discussed for the entire week leading up to the party, and I was encouraged to go. I did not particularly want to go. Finally Freddy talks me into this, and I drive all the way out to Snellville. There's nothing to drink, but there's plenty of Crazy Anthony afoot, and I decided that I was not going to change my position on, like, not hanging around people who are psycho, and no, I definitely will NOT go to a party with him.

Trey said "I told you so" when I recounted this to him; then after complaining bitterly (as only Trey can) about Freomi, he had to go and find his OWN set of trifling people to hang out with. They're MUCH worse than Freomi.

Also I have a fable for you. Once upon a time there was a short, cute, fuzzy headed man, and he went out to a pond after a Super Bowl party and there he saw an acquaintance of some standing, a toady frog. The short, cute, fuzzy headed man put his hand affectionately on the toady frog's thigh, and the toady frog hauled off and decked him, twice. The short, cute, fuzzy headed man's beautiful, elegant, brilliant, sexy, glamorous, creative, intellectual, ravishing wife laughed so much when she heard this story, she got sick and didn't go to work that day. The short, cute, fuzzy headed man made her promise not to tell the story to anyone, so she didn't. Sort of. She would have thought it was even funnier if the toady frog had taken the short, cute, fuzzy headed man's up on his offer, and later when the short, cute, fuzzy headed man realised what he had done after the lightning bug juice had worn off, he would have been horrified! She would have been less amused if the short, cute, fuzzy headed man had put his hand on the thigh of a few other animals who like to hang around the pond, because the animal she is thinking of, a gazelle, would probably have accepted the short, cute, fuzzy headed man's offer.

Moral: Not everyone wants to be a prince.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Random Comments

I haven't updated my blog in a while, so I knew I was due, but there hasn't been much of interest happening recently.
One boy in 6th period wrote on his slate- I gave them slates to practice conjugating verbs on- "Boys go to Mars to get chocolate bars, girls go to Mars to get OWNED." I thought that was funny and told him he has a future in the t-shirt/bumper sticker business.
There, I got the fun stuff out of the way.

At this point I think everyone except for Saniel and the two of us have bailed out of the cabin trip; Sandy had some sort of argument with her sisters several weeks ago and just can't deal with them, so they and their collective is/are not going. Then Freomi are getting, incredibly, even WORSE about being indecisive and can't get it together to go- Alex is apparently still scared of being in the same zip code where Bouncy Bouncy on the Woggy Woggy will be happening, and won't go anywhere without Joe- so they are not going, and Ian is in Thailand, so he's out- boo. Anyway, we'll have a good time.

In other news- Alex is supposed to get a new roommate, some chap who lives with his parents and is 30 years old, and is apparently a devout Muslim and has some doubts about living with the infidel. This person is even MORE indecisive than Alex; he has been talking about moving in for several weeks but then his "grandmother died" and so he went to India for a month. I don't think this person is EVER going to move in; Alex refuses, for whatever reason, to look for someone else, so I said that I would let Trey look for him a roommate, but for some reason he declined this generous offer. After all, Trey did find Steve, who is very nice, and clean, and good company and painted phone numbers all over the wall in his room. Alex for some reason objected to that. According to Trey, Steve is also going to leave in the spring and go back to living in a tent. I joked that instead of being the House of Yes, Alex's house is now going to be the House of We Have to See What Joe is Going to Do. Joe should really milk this whole Alex-waits-on-his-every-word thing, like Jen does; he could have Minions, but he is apparently unwilling to do so. Perhaps he's just waiting for the right moment, and then, all of a sudden, Joe will Summon His Minions. If I can think of anything nice to do for him, I will, just in case. I might let him drive my Grand National when I get it.

Well, the Omega has had ongoing battery idiocy; it would not start one day at school last week, so I called AAA (who then told me I had one call left) and they came out and jiggled the battery cable and the car started. Stupid car. The AAA guy said that the battery cable needed to be tightened, so I tried to do that the other day, and then the bolt broke off so I gave up. I'm still interested in buying a Grand National, and the prices are going up! They were $15 for a low mileage '87 and now they're around $18-$20K! I'm very nervous about buying this car that I've never driven on line, but then the rising prices are convincing me that I had better do something before it is too expensive- - -